Department of Labor Sues Google Over Compensation Data (cnn.com) 350
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNNMoney: The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday to get the Internet company to turn over compensation data on its employees. The data request is part of a routine audit into Google's equal opportunity hiring practices, which is required because of the company's role as a federal contractor. Google provides cloud computing services to various federal agencies and the military. Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more. According to the lawsuit, Google has repeatedly refused to provide names, contact information, job history and salary history details that the government has requested for its employees. The Labor Department is now requesting that a judge order all of Google's federal contracts canceled unless it complies with the data request. "Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so," Thomas M. Dowd, acting director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement. "We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation."
TFA missed two. (Score:4, Interesting)
Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more.
Missed two biggies:
Age.
National origin.
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I guess those fit under "AND MORE".
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Presumably those could be covered under "and more" ?
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New data reveals that 86% of the total H1B visas issued in 2014 for technology firms was used to hire IT professionals from India. The data accessed by Computerworld through Right of Information Act, reveals that a lion share of visas issued for computer jobs are claimed by Indians.
So obviously there is categorical information for national origin and the H1B programs need more diversity...
If CEOs insist that middle class Americans compete with cheap foreign labor, why not outsource the jobs of CEOs? If b
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Re: TFA missed two. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not even close. Being British, French, Spanish, or South African tells you little about the US notion of "race" or "ethnicity".
(And the fact that the US government even has official definitions of racial categories is an outrage.)
Re: TFA missed two. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hard to do affirmative action without defining race.
Re: TFA missed two. (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't be so sure. Hell South Africa managed to do appartheid without having race defined !
I'm not kidding you. They went through about 6 different attempts to define it in the early days - and ultimately settled on "you are a member of the race of which the community and culture accepts you as a member" - and had individual cases of dispute left up to judges who would rule when there were issues based on collecting a whole lot of personal data and witness statements from neighbours and the like.
In a few cases coloureds (the South African term 'coloured' means "mixed race" - it's more like what Americans once called "Mulatos") managed to cross the line and become legally white for example, and at least a few white people who lived in areas bordering coloured populations ended up being legally included in that race group. Oddly though there was the case of Johnny Clegg. Clegg was white-born in a Zulu area and fully and utterly adoped Zulu culture, and was accepted as a Zulu by the local tribe. Despite years of attempts though - he could never get legally classified as Zulu. Clegg is also one the best-selling musicians in the country's history so his case became very well publicised.
In 1986, in a desperate attempt to try and keep the system on life support the government instituted a number of reforms -believing they could keep the foundational appartheid system running if they curb the worst of it's excesses. These reforms got rid of several of the most racist laws and in some truly bizarre ways at times. For example it scrapped the immorality act (which prohibited sex or marriage across colour lines) but kept the group areas act - which meant that while you could now marry somebody of a different race, legally you and your new spouse could not live together !
But one of those reforms completely scrapped racial classification and definition. The 1986 election was the last true whites-only election in the country in fact, and had there been another appartheid election it would have been very hard to keep black people from voting since legally they didn't exist anymore. That they somehow managed to keep the segregation laws going while not legally classifying people at all made it all rather surreal - even by appartheid government standards. They also insituted a new tricameral parliament. The two additional houses of parliament had one which ruled over coloured affairs and one which ruled over Indian affairs (no representation for black's still - despite being 80% of the population) and they had no real power anyway as the white-chamber could veto any law they passed.
This was the beginning of the end of the system anyway. The government grew ever more paranoid and the country was effectively in a never-ending state of emergency. Always quite censorious and masters of propaganda it got stepped up to never before seen levels and even flagrant dishonesty - the government fought a ten year war in Angola while denying to the population that it was at war at all ! It was "just guarding the border of Namibia" it said... this was a bit of an open secret though - you can't have thousands of soldiers serving and coming home without some of them talking about where they really were.
That president P.W. Botha basically went crazier and crazier - and after a minor health-scare in 1989 the party essentially held a coup from the inside, claiming he had, had a severe stroke they removed him from office before he could wipe the shit from his eyes and gave the presidency to F.W. De Klerk who abolished all remaining appartheid laws, freed Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners and announced a negotiation process to ultimately lead to elections in a unified South Africa where all could vote - all in his very first speech (February 29, 1989).
There was one last desperate attempt to ressurrect the system. In 1992 the rightwing parties (who held a considerable number of parliamentary seats) were clamoring that the National Party had no right to end the system, negotiate with the ANC (and other
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"you are a member of the race of which the community and culture accepts you as a member"
And that is the real definition of race. Lots of people think race is genetic, but the one group that has near unanimous agreement that race is not genetic are actual geneticists. For example, Dr Craig Venter (founder of the Human Genome Project) says, "Race is a social concept, not a scientific one. We all evolved in the last 100,000 years from the same small number of tribes that migrated out of Africa and colonized the world." [nytimes.com]
Turns out there is more genetic diversity within commonly defined racial gro
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My point exactly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: TFA missed two. (Score:5, Interesting)
National origin can somewhat be described by race
Hah. I was born in Joburg and have been an American citizen more than 20 years. I'm white as the day is long but I mark "African American" everywhere I can. I'm sure they've got me lumped in with the blacks on the national rolls.
Re: TFA missed two. (Score:5, Interesting)
And bureaucrats everywhere are torn between the desire to chastise you for screwing up their numbers or praise you for being technically correct—the best kind of correct....
Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
Can't they?
Google, the company running the most all-pervasive surveillance system in all of human history, is fighting to protect their own privacy?
Not that I needed another belly laugh, after the last election, but dude, that's funny.
Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
I've work for Google for 2 years now. Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else? Google fights harder than any company I know of against government over-reach and invasion of privacy (though kudos to Apple recently, other than that NYT app in China thing). I don't know any details, and IANAL, but this feels to me like Google is looking out for our privacy rather than trying to hide hiring practices. Do you want to give your details to these investigators? Why not anonymize the data? I see almost zero non-anonymous data at Google. The government should learn a few of these tricks.
As for "all-pervasive surveillance", Google does collect huge amounts of data, but after two years of trying pretty hard to test Google's defenses against internal employee hacking, I have to give Google an A+. I can't help but to poke at every weakness I see - it's a personality flaw. I personally have not seen 1 byte of user data that I did not need to do my job, and I am easily in the top 1% of nosy Googlers. My son told me once, "You love to be evil for good". That's how I feel about testing defenses. There is always room for improvement, and I think we're trying hard to improve, but no other company on earth comes close to protecting user data like Google does today.
As for discriminating against women, older folks, etc... well, we're a company made up of humans, just like the rest. There's room for improvement. Before working here, I worked primarily in FPGA place and route algorithms, which is a field with AFAIK exactly zero women. Please let me know if I'm wrong, and managers don't count, I mean the actual algorithms geeks. I read somewhere that we only employ something close to 15% women in engineering/software jobs, but when I look around, I see closer to 30% women. It might just be my group, but I think we try pretty hard to expunge 1960's Star Trek inspired sexist attitudes. As a 53-year-old, I have to try pretty hard to try and eliminate unconscious biases - which is hard! I don't know of any other company that demands this of older engineers like me. It's a very good thing.
Anyway, I'm guessing you don't really know what goes on at Google, but this is Slashdot. Stating strong opinions about that which we know nothing about is what we do here...
Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:5, Informative)
I've work for Google for 2 years now. Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else?
It is a legal requirement to in order to get any federal contracts. As part of the contract they are required to prove compliance with equal opportunity laws. They have the contracts, so they are required to abide by the terms.
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I seriously doubt it is that simple. Google lawyers don't talk generally to anyone outside Google, but when I get upset at them for something that seems incredibly stupid to me (most recently, their rejection of software with a CC0 license), I get an earful of detail and justifications that would make your head spin. AFAIK, it's not Google lawyers that are messed up, but the system in which they have to do their jobs. From what I can tell, most of them are trying to fight the good fight, and not be evil.
Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)
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I started ViASIC in 2000, and I am proud to have had the Air Force Reasarch Labs and Sandia as two of my favorite clients, as well as the smaller Mission Reserch (MRDC) that does some outstanding R&D. In short, I've had a lot of government contracts, and sure, the super-long forms we all have to sign include all kinds of rights for the government. They're worse than the worst EULA you ever did not read and then clicked "I have read and agree to the terms and conditions."
Here's one that really pissed m
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s/AMS Semiconductor/AMI Semiconductor/. AMS is a great company - Austria Micro Systems, IIRC. AMI Semiconductor, or AMIS, was the company that screwed VASIC big-time. Chris King was CEO at the time. I've found that weak leadership leads to companies that behave as the combination of their worst elements.
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I do federal contracting. This is a standard, non-negotiable clause. If Google wanted the money, they agreed to the clause. I'm glad you've had bad luck with the legal team and CC0 licenses, but this had to do with federal contracts worth billions. Money speaks.
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I seriously doubt it is that simple.
Well, you're seriously incorrect.
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I seriously don't doubt it's that simple, as the Department of Labor is saying it is exactly that in TFS:
The Labor Department is now requesting that a judge order all of Google's federal contracts canceled unless it complies with the data request. "Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so," Thomas M. Dowd, acting director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement. "We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation."
Now, it's possible that Google said they wouldn't produce it without a proper subpoena for records, just to limit their own liabilities. In which case, once a federal judge issues a court order to produce records or have the contracts terminated (with whatever termination clauses may be in the contracts), Google happily hands over the data.
Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:5, Informative)
Easy. The contract demands it. Google sells their services to the government (cloud services, it seems like). However, to do that, the government doesn't just go "Sign Up" for an account. They're actually not allowed to just use a solution without contest - they must procure the service through a competition.
So they put out a RFP for what services they need, and in those quotes, they then select a proposal and then send out a whole set of contract documents that you have to agree to. And one of those would to be provide a whole pile of personnel information on demand.
Since Google refuses to abide by the contract, the DoL has the right to request a contract termination because Google has technically breached it.
The "right" of the government to get the data was given by Google when Google signed the contract.
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Since Google refuses to abide by the contract, the DoL has the right to request a contract termination because Google has technically breached it.
They Dept of labor is not suing to terminate the contract though. They are suing to get private information which, after it is in their hands, can be used by any government department. And this information is MORE than what the IRS would get. Getting salary history and career history essentially means information on how people moved from position to position. This would give the government information on which projects each Google employee ever worked on and their phone numbers (which IRS may not have),
Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:4, Informative)
from the fucking summary:
The Labor Department is now requesting that a judge order all of Google's federal contracts canceled unless it complies with the data request. "Despite many opportunities to produce this information voluntarily, Google has refused to do so," Thomas M. Dowd, acting director for the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said in a statement. "We filed this lawsuit so we can obtain the information we need to complete our evaluation."
Don't be an apologist.
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Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
As for "all-pervasive surveillance", Google does collect huge amounts of data, but after two years of trying pretty hard to test Google's defenses against internal employee hacking, I have to give Google an A+. I can't help but to poke at every weakness I see - it's a personality flaw. I personally have not seen 1 byte of user data that I did not need to do my job, and I am easily in the top 1% of nosy Googlers. My son told me once, "You love to be evil for good". That's how I feel about testing defenses. There is always room for improvement, and I think we're trying hard to improve, but no other company on earth comes close to protecting user data like Google does today.
NSA offers roughly the same message only they claim collecting data doesn't actually count as "collecting" until it has been used. They are basically asserting it isn't what you have it is what you do with what you take that counts.
This doesn't work for money stolen in bank heists or scams, exfiltration of confidential data such as trade and government secrets. It doesn't seem rational to believe any judge anywhere would accept the line of argument you didn't use what you took as a defense...
NSA brass even makes public statements about all of their safeguards and red tape... at least when they are not undermining themselves by publically gloating about their power and exploits.
Anyway, I'm guessing you don't really know what goes on at Google, but this is Slashdot. Stating strong opinions about that which we know nothing about is what we do here...
Personally speaking for myself I just don't care. Just like NSA collecting data domestically such assertions of being careful and self-limiting completely misses the point it's simply none of Google's business in the first place.
Massive corporations (especially ones with a defacto monopoly) and governments always try to sell the idea they are somehow different or special insulated from historical examples of human nature. They want us to believe they won't overreach or leverage themselves in pursuit of their objective functions. I am not interested in debating this point or characterizing anyone as good or evil.
I am only interested in promotion of structures which hold EVERYONES feet to the fire. This means a few massive companies like Google don't get to go ape shit and read everyone's email and track everyone's every move across virtually every website on the planet whether Google is their search engine or not.
This behind the scenes industrial scale spying relies mostly on ignorance and lack of choice. All of this data ultimately isn't being used for everyone's benefit it is being used to give corporations an upper hand over consumers -- an unfair advantage, an unfair playing field. They don't want *their* feet burnt.
Hopefully soon with increasing public awareness, certain hidden technological changes and possibly legislation there will be adjustments to better balance things out. The status quo is unsustainable and Google is at the forefront of being the problem.
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NSA offers roughly the same message only they claim collecting data doesn't actually count as "collecting" until it has been used.
This is slashdot, so I should not get worked up, but are you kidding me? The NSA tapped our data cables between data centers, and since we backup data between data centers, that gave them nearly everything, without a warrant or any kind of legal right to steal America's data. They used that data to figure out who was having affairs with whom, among other invasive programs they wrote. The NSA's problem is they don't have enough humans to examine all the data they take illegally, while even as a quite nosy employee at Google, I've not seen one byte of private data other than some HTTP headers I needed for debugging (with the rest of the requests redacted).
I do think the NSA as an organization believes in fighting the good fight, but without strong leadership, they've helped prove my theory that organizations without strong leadership will behave as badly as the sum of their worst parts.
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it's simply none of Google's business in the first place.
Correction: It's Google's business if you choose to use their services, because your eyeballs and the information needed to target the right ads to them are the "fee" you pay for the use of the services. If you don't like that, you can choose not to use the services. Of course, there are Google ads on lots of third-party sites, but Google makes it easy for you to ensure that Google doesn't track you on those sites as well if you want, including browser plug-ins that ensure your don't-track-me preferences do
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Have you tried to use the internet with *ALL* of google's services blocked? Without google very large swaths of the internet simply break
Don't block them, just use the tracking opt-out. Works fine. If you have specific examples of stuff that actually breaks, let me know and I'll file bugs.
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Dude, your creepy level of loyalty is misplaced: you're working for the bad guys.
Dude, you're wrong.
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Google is infamous for age discrimination and you're an outlier.
Re:Google can tell me the definition of hypocrisy (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. It isn't so bad in Mountain View, but have you been to SF lately? It isn't just Google. The entire SF hipster startup culture in SF is highly youth-oriented, and I worry that the culture may be more sexist than what we've seen in the Bay Area since the 1960s. What happens when you give a bunch of 20-year-old men a lot of money, and a great dating scene with far more single women then men?
In any case, there are some good reasons for Google's preference for hiring people right out of college. I am still recovering from culture-shock. It would have been far easier for me to have gone to work for Google without having worked for startups for 25 years. When I see stupid stuff that I can fix, I feel compelled to fix it. That works well in small companies, but it will only piss off people at Google, and ensure you get a poor review. I advise nooglers with experience like me to try and ignore what that they learned before.
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> why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else?
IANAA, but I assume your government already knows your name, address, phone number, salary history, etc. Isn't that how they tax you?
The other stuff, I think, is things like promotions, which they *could* infer from salary, but that's probably not as accurate as they want it to be.
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So what are you saying? That Google collects the data and then promptly throws it into a black hole? Or Google collects the data but there is no human intervention an
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Because Google chose to pursue being a US Government contractor, and the US Government has rules (read: laws) duly passed by the Congress about how it conducts business. Don't want to have the US Government opening up your books and peeking around to that degree? Don't work for a government contractor.
Oh, and like the US Government doesn't already have your name, contact info, salary history, etc. See: the IRS. You file all that shit every year.
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"Without a court order, why does the government get to have my name, contact info, salary history, and God knows what else?"
You already have to give the government this data every year, its called 'paying your taxes'. You don't get to wait until the government gets a court order for you to disclose your W-2 do you?
Neoliberal Capitalism vs. the Gubbermint (Score:2, Insightful)
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You do know that Obama is still President, right? And that this is his Labor Department filing the suit? And that the Labor Department is filing suit based on breaches of contracts that were signed potentially years ago?
Oh, and LOL @ "stupid enough to try to take on Google". People said the same thing about Microsoft, but we all learned that the one organization with more time, money, and lawyers than any other organization on the planet is the Department of Justice. They could spend the next 30 years l
Why did it come to this (Score:4, Interesting)
I do not understand why google has not complied. I get it if they do not like the request, I wouldn't like it either, but they signed for those contracts and agreed to these terms so they could get paid.
Quite frankly at a certain point an example needs to be made.
I see this kind of disregard for the law and for contracts etc and it's getting much worse. We need to publicly kill a large corporation, and we need to do it in a very messy painful way. We need to do this to bring the others into line.
Sun Tsu's art of war dictates that a general must publicly execute one of his men so the others fall in line. We need to kill sony for infecting multiple countries with rootkits, or subway for poisoning our population, or walmart for actively encouraging child slave labor, or google for failing to comply with legal contractual obligations.
One must die that we may all live, this is the way of the harvest and we know it, now we just have to pick one to kill by revoking their corporate charter and disassembling their physical business structures.
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Sun Tsu's art of war dictates that a general must publicly execute one of his men so the others fall in line. We need to kill ... subway for poisoning our population ...
Huh? Poison?
Subway is one of the more nutritious purveyors of fast food out there. (A bit bland, and not as good a nutritional deal, by a long shot, as Extreme Pita, but nutritious nonetheless.)
Just get your sandwich (such as a philly cheesesteak) "as a salad" and add a bunch of veggies, including peppers to spice it up.
Re:Why did it come to this (Score:5, Informative)
You're referring to azodicarbonamide. Azodicarbonamide has GRAS status in the US and is legally allowed to be added to flour as a bleaching agent at up to 45 ppm (it also helps bread to rise when heated). It thermally decomposes into harmless byproducts, and other than exposure to large amounts of the powder which has been linked to asthma (but what particulate hasn't) is perfectly safe. Subway did nothing wrong by including it, and in fact, over 400 foods from a bunch of other companies include it as well. I'm perfectly fine with publically executing a company for legal violations to prove a point, but Subway is not one of them. If you want to kill an evil food company, lets go after Nestle.
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Sun Tsu's art of war dictates that a general must publicly execute one of his men so the others fall in line. We need to kill sony for infecting multiple countries with rootkits....
I vote we start with AT&T. Is it about due to be broken up, again. It is worse than the terminator.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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... Hold the executive(s) responsible personally. Pierce the corporate veil and go after them directly for ordering non-compliance.
So what I'm hearing is public execution of CEO's. Seems a bit barbaric, but I bet it would get companies to shape up.
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Candidate pool (Score:2)
To know whether they discriminate or not, you have to know the demographics of their candidate pool.
If say 20% women are applying (for a position type), and the women's qualification levels are equivalent statistically to men's, and roughly 20% women are getting hired that's not discrimination. Same goes with race.
If there are barriers to getting to the candidate pool with equivalent qualifications and experience, that's a problem earlier in the chain and in the nature of educational opportunity equality an
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Except that those clauses in the contract are required by federal law. It doesn't matter who the President is, the Labor Department will still be bound by law to proceed, unless the laws are changed by the Congress.
Good luck having that happen before a federal judge rules on this thing.
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Glad I'm not the only one that didn't recall that part of the Art of War.
Voltaire's "pour encourager les autres" is the usual reference.
ridiculous (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is utterly ridiculous for the government to force companies to keep track of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. That is personal information that is neither the employer's business nor the federal government's.
People should either refuse to answer such questions or simply make up answers.
Re: ridiculous (Score:2, Informative)
It's required per terms of the contract they agreed to when they took on Federal IT contracts. You take my money, you have to abide by the contract. SIMPLE. Google thinks they are above anybody else's rules.
Re:ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
I think it is utterly ridiculous for the government to force companies to keep track of race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity. That is personal information that is neither the employer's business nor the federal government's.
People should either refuse to answer such questions or simply make up answers.
If the government doesn't require companies to track on report on these, then how can the government prevent discrimination based on those attributes? It's exceptionally hard for an employee who feels he was discriminated against to prove such discrimination, especially if, as you suggest, employers aren't even required to track it.
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As we so often read on slashdot, correlation is not causation. Even with access to records, the government can't prevent or prove discrimination based on protected attributes.
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How can the government prove discrimination with this data? What percentage of African Americans at Google, or what gender pay gap, actually proves discrimination?
(Of course, it isn't the job of the government to prevent private discrimination in the first place, and attempts to do so often ends up harming the very people it is supposed to help.)
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Google could have chosen to have the conditions of the contract changed before they signed it.
They didn't.
So what exactly is your problem here? Is your problem that the government was party to the contract? Does that somehow make the contract void in the name of your personal view of "liberty"?
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I made no comment on the validity of the contract or whether Google should or should not comply with it.
What I am saying is that it is morally and politically wrong for governments to enquire about, or keep track of, the race, religion, or sexual orientation of citizens. Fascist and racist countries do that, free countrie
In your perfect world, maybe, but .... (Score:2)
It's not a perfect world full of perfect people, and if you want to be able to get a job without having to belong to the correct Church (a problem with an employment agency near me a while back who were rejecting Catholics, Mormons and non-Christians despite taking government money) th
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Government shouldn't have such policies because they aren't necessary, they are ineffective, and they are frequently abused.
Re: ridiculous (Score:2)
Tell that to the people who think a good government should proactively try to prevent illegal discrimination, especially in companies that it hires -- and in some cases pays billions of dollars.
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I am telling it to those people: while you may have good intentions, you are dangerously wrong. Government cannot prevent discrimination, but it can massively abuse this kind of data.
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What's the "and more" part? Can I get me one of those cushy jobs reserved for old farts? Would I have to be gay, or at least pretend to be? Is there a test?
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...Would I have to be gay, or at least pretend to be? Is there a test?
Sounds like classic Harold Ramis:
I'm not homosexual, but I'm willing to learn... [youtube.com]
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The government doesn't force anyone to do this. What they do is make it part of any government contract, if you want to work for the government you must agree to these regulations (that were put in place by congress long before Obama took office) and the agency in question is required by law to audit contractors to ensure their compliance with the contract provisions.
If Google refuses to provide this they will see every government contract terminated and will be bared from providing services to the governme
Re:ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, and I am saying that it is wrong for government to collect this data on anybody. It simply isn't the government's business who I like to sleep with or what "race" I am. And storing that information in government databases is creepy and dangerous.
Did I mention Obama anywhere? The American obsession with categorizing people by race obviously goes back to the founding of the US. People have always found rationalizations for it, how it is good for everybody, how it is necessary for justice and the correct functioning of society. But in the end, these categorizations are, have always been, and will always be racist, discriminatory, and harmful to everybody.
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Makes me curious to know... (Score:2)
I wonder what other contracts the government has with Google...
This lawsuit lists only one, the GSA's "Advertising and Integrated Marketing Solutions Contract", number GS07F227BA. Since it gives a contract number, we can actually reference it on a few [insidegov.com] different websites. [fpds.gov] I guess we can use the FPDS website [fpds.gov] to search for more contracts awarded to Google. ...
There's a million dollar contract for Google AdWords for the FDA [fpds.gov], $250K awarded by the State Department [fpds.gov] for marketing its "Programs and Products", A lo
Google's response (Score:5, Informative)
TFS should have included Google's response (already in TFA):
“We’ve worked hard to comply with the OFCCP’s current audit. However, the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we've made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail. These requests include thousands of employees’ private contact information which we safeguard rigorously. We hope to continue working with OFCCP to resolve this matter.”
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As my reply above noted these restrictions were put in place by congress a long time ago. They are a requirement of every single government contract, if you want to work for the government you must by law comply. The information gathering is extensive, often includes information on all employee's not just the ones working on government contracts and is one of the reasons federal work is specialty in the contracting world that requires people knowledgeable with the process and requirements. The agency in que
Re: Google's response (Score:2)
Yes it does, they have the clause so they can contact empolyees directly if they have suspicions the data provided by the company is inaccurate or incomplete. It would appear the agency believes the data is erronious and wishes to spot audit by contacting employees directly outside the work place so they can be sure the employees aren't being pressured. These are standard terms in govt contracts.
Re: Google's response (Score:2)
You might not get asked, but your employer probably has a postal address for mailing stuff to you, possibly a phone number for emergency contact, and so forth. The government could ask, even if they often don't.
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The DoL doesn't collect taxes.
Re:Google's response (Score:5, Insightful)
" These requests include thousands of employeesâ(TM) private contact information which we safeguard rigorously"
Doesn't fucking matter. For tax purposes, these things MUST be known. ZERO EXCUSE.
Umm, the IRS is not requesting the data. This isn't about taxes, it's about hiring quotas and affirmative-action compliance. The IRS has all the employees' contact info necessary for tax purposes.
This sounds more like a politically-correct witch hunt on the part of the government. Maybe I'm wrong, I await proof that contradicts it.
Strat
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No this is about Google demonstrating that it was hiring the best people for the job, not people based on race.
How do you prove a negative? Any data Google offered could easily be used against them even if Google did not discriminate in any way if those evaluating said data decide to go after Google. They've done it to large defense contractors they wished to apply pressure against in the past. We're not talking about 'reasonable standards' of proof as the average person would understand it here, we're talking about federal bureaucrats. The deciding factor with bureaucrats is typically whatever grows their power, pr
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Well if the concern is about confidential data, then just wait for the next public leak and the problem will be solved.
Public leak of Google-managed personal information? Has there ever been such a thing? Not that I'm aware of.
Not Equal Opportunity (Score:4, Insightful)
The Department of Labor filed a lawsuit against Google on Wednesday to get the Internet company to turn over compensation data on its employees. [...] Google is obligated to let the government access records that show its hiring doesn't discriminate based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and more.
And how exactly does providing data on employees prove that they do not discriminate against applicants? Oh, that's right, it isn't about equality of opportunity, it's about equality of results. I forgot.
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Yeah, this will last about 2 weeks (Score:2)
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When Trump is in this will get canned,
Not after they tell Trump that Google is discriminating by hiring furrinors in preference to natural born umericans.
Re:Yeah, this will last about 2 weeks (Score:4, Interesting)
You're making jokes about this, but how do we know that this isn't exactly what Google is most worried about?
I mean, if you were going to just hazard a wild guess based on the usual stereotypes you'd figure Google skews young and male in engineering but does better overall in gender when marketing and other soft skills positions are included. You could talk to anyone in technology and get this same mix described to you like the people involved were talking about the weather or the sun rising in the East. Just the way it is.
But when it comes to race and national origin, I'd guess they skew heavily Indian and Asian but extremely light on blacks.
That's a bad combination for this zeitgeist. Not hiring enough blacks exposes you to all the usual discrimination claims and I'm sure BLM would love a target like Google.
But the real zinger will be the heavy hiring of Indians and Chinese and they don't want Trump ranting on Twitter (a competing service!) about how they're not hiring Americans.
And if Trump had half a brain, he'd say that part of why blacks are doing poorly was that Google was hiring Indians over them. It's ludicrous, I know, but it's political genius because it deflects Trump's alt-right image and it pits blacks against Indians. It's classic divide and conquer.
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You apparently believe he will rewrite the entire federal code in 2 weeks. Your wrong. They couldn't change 10% of the federal code in 4 years.
It's the right time! (Score:5, Interesting)
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You must have Google confused with Facebook.
Nope [slashdot.org].
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If you're over 50 years old and looking for a job at Google , apply now!
Well, year-after next I'll be 50. But I'm already working for Google. What should I do?
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Well, year-after next I'll be 50. But I'm already working for Google. What should I do?
Train/choose better the newbies. Google did great stuff a few years ago, but over time the pioneers were promoted, and the newer generations are not as innovative and code efficient as their elders.
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over time the pioneers were promoted, and the newer generations are not as innovative and code efficient as their elders.
I disagree. What's changed isn't the quality of the people, it's the nature (mainly, size) of the company and the expectations users have of its products, which changes the sort of work that can be done.
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So, are you a janitor or a security guard? Because those are the only two positions at Google that people over 40 qualify for.
Software engineer, currently working on Android.
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As long as you are an accomplished researcher with at least one PhD, a founder of at least one industry and all around good guy. Then, go ahead. Ivy League MBAs are acceptable with the same conditions.
We are talking about, what, 0.001% of the population?
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As long as you are an accomplished researcher with at least one PhD, a founder of at least one industry and all around good guy.
Actually, for software engineering positions Google doesn't care about research, and doesn't care about PhDs (or degrees at all). Being a good guy/gal does matter, though. As does being able to think and code on your feet.
What's google's side? (Score:2)
Probably a Witch Hunt (Score:2, Interesting)
We're a government contractor. We get audited. We've NEVER been asked for as much data as they're asking google. This is almost certainly a witch hunt.
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Fuckin' with your cash is the only thing you kids seem to understand!
Re:Evil (Score:4, Funny)
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